Book review
Tsakona, Villy & Chovanec, Jan (eds.) (2018). The Dynamics of Interactional Humor. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Tsakona, Villy & Chovanec, Jan (eds.) (2018). The Dynamics of Interactional Humor. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
More...when history intersects representation
The context for the paper is the inclusion of a 64-year old cartoon in the Political Sciencetextbook that caused an uproar in the Indian parliament in 2012. The controversy drawsattention to the two-facedness of any political cartoon which is an artistic representation of ahistorical event. It is, hence, ambivalent by being an expression of artistic freedom as well asa humorous comment on history where the axis of representation intersects the axis of history.The representation of the Dalit icon, Ambedkar, was objectionable to the political partyespousing the Dalit cause which, through its leader, Tirumavalavan, raised the issue inparliament. The paper posits that the reaction was an event that was hitherto dormant andthat it erupted on account of elements that fed its potential for virality in the environment,thereby, turning it into a fact. To this end, the paper revives interest in the imitation theory ofthe French sociologist, Gabriel Tarde, who, incidentally, was an intellectual influence onAmbedkar. Moreover, it employs Zeno Vendler’s distinction between an “event” and a “fact”,the Deleuzian idea of “assemblage,” and the idea of “conceptual metaphor” as laid out byLakoff and Johnson. The paper reads the vicissitudes of the cartoon in order to theorize theelements that cause virality in a communicative environment.
More...Milner Davis, Jessica (ed.) (2017). Satire and Politics: The Interplay of Heritage and Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
More...the representation of foreigners in the films of Billy Wilder
This paper examines the work of Billy Wilder whose rich cinematic production frequentlyinvolves the collision of different languages as well as the clash of dissimilar cultures. As anAustrian living in the USA, the director had the privilege of gaining insight into his adoptedculture from the point of view of an outsider – a bilingual “other” who made 25 films inalmost 40 years of working in Hollywood. His films recurrently depict foreign characters atwhich Wilder pokes fun whether they are English, French, German, Italian, Russian or eventhe Americans of his adopted country. More precisely, the paper offers an overview of themulti-modal portrayals of diverse “foreigners,” with examples taken from a small butsignificant sample of Wilder’s films. The subtitling of dialogue in the secondary language forthe target English-speaking audience and the specific translation solutions are not within thescope of this discussion, instead we focus on the comic collision of two languages and moreimportantly, on the way Wilder implements humour to highlight the absurdity of culturaldifference. In other words, our main goal is to explore two or more languages in contrastwhen they become a humorous trope.
More...fruitful directions for multilingual humour in “translation”
A heterolingual text is characterised by the presence of two or more different languages, or two or more varieties of the same language (Corrius & Zabalbeascoa 2011: 115). This article discusses possible methods of translating into English of a text containing two varieties of German: Ottokar Domma’s Der brave Schüler Ottokar [The Good Schoolboy Ottokar]. In these stories, about a schoolboy growing up in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the 1960s, Domma creates a zone of friction between child narrator Ottokar’s everyday German and the language of GDR officialdom (“official discourse”). This article first shows that following a conventional method of translating a literary text into English does not allow this satire to be conveyed to the reader. It then presents two alternative translational methods — “thick” and creative — that demonstrate how it is helpful, indeed in some cases necessary, for the translator to adopt a broad understanding of “translation” in respect of texts that exploit multilingualism for humorous purposes. It is argued that methods of translating in which effect is privileged over form — which here included introducing multimodality — can serve well to open up heterolingual humour for speakers of other languages.
More...Chen, Li Chi Lee (2017). Taiwanese and Polish Humour: A Socio Pragmatic Analysis . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
More...Massih Zekavat (2017). Satire, Humour, and the Construction of Identities. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
More...Delia Chiaro (2018), The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age. #like #share #lol. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.
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The narrative pattern and discursive strategies of stand-up comedy in Nigeria reveal sometropes and motifs that are contemporary to the socio-political realities of the country. Thesenarrative/discursive strategies demonstrate three discourse types: salutation/greetingdiscourse, reporting discourse, and informing discourse. With these discourse types, stand-upcomedians use themselves as the victims of the jokes in order to evoke laughter in the audience.The performances of stand-up comedy, however, have not been accorded due recognition ofthe functional arts that can be used to critique the failure of the ruling elite in the NigerianState. This is because stand-up comedy is class-selective and occasion-driven. To evokelaughter in the audience and to comment on the reality of existence, stand-up comediansdeploy language aesthetics, kinesics, and atmosphere. The modal transition from pure oralstage to the technological phase of performance informs the conceptualisation of mediamediated performance (MMP) through recorded VCDs/DVDs and social media. Data on thestand-up comedy of AY and Elenu are collected through media mediated performances (MMP)on VCD. Data on the subject matter, topicality, and discursive strategies of AY and Elenu’s(who are among ace stand-up comedians in Nigeria) jokes are analysed and discussed. Withthe subject matter and topicality of the jokes, this paper suggests that stand-up comedyperforms the utilitarian functions of literary and performing arts. It entertains, moralises,satirises, and educates members of heterogeneous audiences on some values and ethos of thecontemporary Nigerian society.
More...A diachronic appraisal of the contributions of the masking tradition
Masking is a phenomenon that is traced to almost all human ages, from its prehistoric andprimitive narratives in Africa, its dramatic beginnings in ancient Greece and Rome, to its useas forms of character delineation in the commedia dell’Arte of the 16th and 18th centuryEurope, as well as its age long association with carnivals due largely to its analogous relationto humour and entertainment. Masking, as comic as it may seem, has been critical ofhumanity’s social dispositions from time past. As humans, the façade of the mask is a leewayto speak truth to power and also an opportunity for the performance of self in ways that are atvariant with the real self. As topical as the activities of the masquerade are to the society, noacademic quest has been directed to investigate how humour and satire have always beenassociated with the masquerade. Following the social criticism, humour and entertainmentwhich have become evidently inherent in the emergent stand-up comedy, scholars havedirected their critical attention towards this new live theatre without considering thehumorous functions of the masquerade for an academic enquiry. It is against this backdropthat this paper has decided to investigate and re-establish historically the humorouscontributions of the masking art in almost all facets of human conditions. The resources forthe paper are a combination of library and historical research. The paper establishes thatsatire and humour, as enjoyed in all venues of stand-up comedy acts in Nigeria, are just acontemporary addition to what masks had done in the past but for dearth of properdocumentation of these contributions. The masking tradition has been a source of humour andsarcasm to issues bordering on human relations all over the world.
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Studies in stand-up comedy in Nigeria have recently begun to gain serious attention. Several articles that describe the psychological and socio-cultural contexts of joke texts of stand-up comedy in Nigeria have appeared within the last few years (Orhiunu 2007; Imo 2010;Adetunji 2013; Filani 2015, 2016, among others.). However, one aspect of the phenomenon that is yet to be explored is the function of a multimodal generic framework and its contributions to the humorous content of the genre. While it is important to maintain the spoken text as many writers have done, the “multiple embodied modes” (Norris 2008: 13) that amplify the spoken text must be given due consideration. This study, therefore, examines the Nigerian stand-up comedy from the perspective of a multimodal-ESP theory to genre analysis.This theory takes cognisance not only of joke-texts, but also of the visual features that enhance the performance. The material for analysis is videoed data of a popular stand-up comedy show in Nigeria, A Nite of a Thousand Laughs. The study demonstrates that stage management, nonverbal cues (e.g. gesture, movements, and gaze), speeches, body postures, and music/sounds contribute to the communicative value and the production of the genre. Also, it shows how plausible multimodal-ESP approach to genre is in the description of stand-up comedy in the Nigerian context.
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Various studies exist on the social functions of humour and such studies have been carried outin diverse fields that range from the humanities to the sciences. In linguistics, specifically,research shows that humour has been studied from the perspectives of syntax, pragmatics, andsemantics; moreover, there is a dearth of studies on the creation of humour throughphonological processes. Therefore, this study aims to investigate humour and how it isachieved using phonological processes. The study engages mainly qualitative methods ofanalysis. Five comedy skits were purposively selected from Folarin Falana’s (Falz the BahdGuy) eleven collections. These were chosen on the basis of their internet popularity amongNigerians; this popularity was determined on the basis of the rates of downloading the skits.McGraw & Warren’s (2010) Benign Violation Theory was used to account for thephonological violations in the comedies. The various phonological processes that wereviolated include liaison, deletion, insertion, monophthongisation, coalescence, and vowelstrengthening. It is argued that the phonological distortions are deliberately made to achievehumour in these Nigerian comedies, especially when the high educational level of the artist isconsidered. Also, there anti-Anglicism and pro-Nigerianism in the data as the artist identifieshimself with Nigeria(ns) and creates a niche for himself in the entertainment industry usingthe phonological peculiarities among Nigerians’ language use, especially the Yoruba tribe. Healso creates different personalities to project different messages which are not only peculiar toNigeria but to the world, using these personalities to portray people’s feelings and views ofthe world and how these influence their attitudes.
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Internet memes significantly constitute an outlet for extensive popular political participation in election contexts. They instantiate humour and represent political candidates so as to affect voters’ behaviour. Few studies on memes in political context exist (Shifman et al. 2007; Chen 2013; Tay 2014; Adegoju & Oyebode 2015; Huttington 2016; Dzanic & Berberovic 2017). These studies have not intensively examined the integrative deployment of visual and verbal resources afforded by internet memes to generate humour and to construct specific frames for election candidates in the campaign context of an emerging democracy. Therefore, this study investigates the use of language and visuals for humour generation and for the creation of definite frames for the two major presidential candidates in internet memes created in the course of the 2015 Nigerian presidential election campaigns. The theoretical insights for the study are derived from Attardo’s (1997) set-up-incongruity-resolution theory of humour, Kuypers’ (1997, 2002, 2009, 2010) model of rhetorical framing analysis, Bauman & Briggs’ (1990) concept of entextualisation, Kress & van Leeuwen’s (1996) socio-semiotic model for visual analysis and Sperber & Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory. The analysis indicates that meme producers generate humour and frame candidates through the entextualisation of verbal and visual texts, explicatures and implicatures. The memes construct seven individuated frames and one collective frame for the two major presidential candidates in the sampled memes using visual and linguistic resources. It concludes on the note that supporters of election candidates use humorous internet memes for negatively portraying opponents and for positive representation of the favoured candidate. These negative other-representations serve the purpose of depreciating the electoral values of the opponents and indirectly increasing the electoral chances of their own candidates.
More...Exploring humour in Wole Soyinka’s Alápatà Apátà
This article explores the deployment of humour in Wole Soyinka’s new and full-length play Alápatà Apátà. The emergence of Moses Olaiya (otherwise known as Baba Sala) on the Nigerian theatre scene at a time it was dominated by such colossuses as Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo, and Kola Ogunmola, as a popular jester and comic actor has elevated the phenomenon called Zd to a popular form of art. The idea of serious theatre involving mostly tragedy had dominated the Nigerian theatrical scene to an extent that little attention is devoted to the less popular form of comedy until it was given impetus by the dexterity of Moses Olaiya. In the dramatic literary circle, Wole Soyinka bestrides the Nigerian space with his biting and humorous satire in such plays as The Lion and the JeZel, The Jero Plays, Childe International amongst others. With a great mastery of satire and humour, in his most recent play Alpat Apt, we witnessed a reincarnation of Moses Olaiya. However, Soyinka does not focus only on the character of Moses Olaiya (whom he dedicates the play to), he explores the misapplication of Yoruba language’s accent resulting in semantic oddity. The incongruity that can arise from the misunderstanding of language and its nuances is brought to the fore in our understanding of the theoretical exploration of the phenomenon called Zd. This article thus situates Wole Soyinka’s Alpat Apt within the literary and theatrical explication of humour in the Nigerian context showing that ‘that which is comic’ resonates as a universal human phenomenon irrespective of language.
More...Bell, Nancy (ed.). (2017). Multiple Perspectives on Language Play. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 406 pp.
More...A common denominator for three strains of humour
Incongruity theories maintain that the core of humour is in interplay between meanings. Two incompatible meanings – of situations, verbal utterances or actions – are juxtaposed, one replacing the other or colliding with it. In this paper, I suggest that often the game is not played between two meanings, but between meaning and its carrier. I provide as examples two families of jokes and one general type of humour sharing this mechanism. One of the two families comprises jokes of self-reference, and the other consists of jokes based on deflation of symbols, which means using them in a concrete sense. The general type of humour is the subject of Bergson’s 1900 theory of the comic, mechanical behaviour where flexible human reaction is expected. The mechanism common to all three is a shift of weight from meaning to its carrier. This mechanism is then traced also in other jokes, suggesting possible universality.
More...The potential of informative comedy music as supplementary teaching material
The comedic arts have provided opportunities for humourists to spread information to audiences, sometimes intentionally and other times as a side effect while trying to create laughter. Educators have also found success incorporating comedy into the classroom with humorous activities. While research regarding comedy as a tool to spread information or educate audiences has focused primarily on literature, broadcast media, and film, the area of informative comedy implemented through music remains relatively unexplored. In this paper, the researcher defines ‘informative comedy’ and takes a critical literacy approach analysing song samples of comedy musician “Weird Al” Yankovic—one of the notable comedic music artists in the 20th and 21st centuries—and discusses how his music could be used in a classroom setting. While comedy such as Yankovic’s is not designed to be an educational tool, the researcher suggests that his songs could be used as supplementary materials in the classroom to reinforce concepts specifically regarding cultural issues through commentary as well as lessons in science and grammar. A central aspect of this exploratory paper involves Yankovic’s mix of comedy and informative content focused on culture in the United States, using the popular music genre to convey ideas in ways that may be more palatable for wider audiences and that could be used to assist classroom instruction.
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This research examines the extent to which the integration of humorous literary texts in teaching the Arabic language affects achievement in reading comprehension among Grade 4pupils in the Arab sector in Israel. This research is the first one in the field. Research on the integration of humour in the study of Arabic language as first language does not exist so far.There are very few studies dealing with the integration of humour in the learning process of Arabic as a second language (only three were found). Hence, there are no studies dealing with the integration of humour in the educational field in the Israeli Arab sector. The research took place in one school in the Bedouin sector in the South of Israel. It was based on one experimental class and one control class The study examined the level of the pupils’ knowledge in all components of comprehension: explicit and implicit content, interpretation and integration, evaluating texts and drawing conclusions. The experimental classes studied six humorous stories whereas the control classes studied six stories without humour. The results of the experiment show that the achievements of pupils who learned comprehension using humorous stories was much higher than those in the control classes. In addition, a more positive learning environment was reported in the experimental classes.
More...Morgan, Jeff (2015). American Comic Poetry. History, Techniques and Modern Masters. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company.
More...Milne, Lesley (2016). Laughter and War. Humorous-Satirical Magazines in Britain, France, Germany and Russia 1914-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
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